[Info-vax] Internationalization

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 12/31/18 11:44 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 12/31/2018 10:59 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> On 12/31/18 10:37 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> On 12/31/2018 9:03 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>>> As I mentioned in a previous post, it would be very interesting
>>>> to learn why VMS was chosen for a lot of the systems that are
>>>> still on it.  VMS was never the only choice.  If it was chosen
>>>> for a reason is that reason still valid today?
>>>
>>> If it was chosen after mid 90's there most likely was
>>> a specific reason.
>>>
>>> But before it may just have been a standard choice.
>>
>> There were numerous options before the mid 90's, too.
> 
> Sure.
> 
> But back then VMS was a big player and choosing VMS was a common
> enough choice so that no special justification was really needed.
> 
> Like today if you pick RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu or Windows.
> 
> There are choices. Different companies will have different
> preferences. But no one is surprised if a company picks
> one of them.
> 
> With a rewrite of an old IBM saying: back then nobody
> got fired for choosing VMS.

Maybe not, but I know of at least one time when the chooser
got burned.  :-)

> 
>> I wonder how many VAX were sold as replacements for
>> PDP-11's.
> 
> Probably some. PDP-11 customers were DEC customers, so
> DEC had a foot in the door to sell VAX.

And, I expect migration of programs done in high-level languages
like Fortran, COBOL and DIBOL were simple recompiles with little
more than maybe a data filename change.

> 
> But I don't think it count for that large part of
> the VAX market. I don't think I have ever heard of
> anyone going from PDP-11 to VAX. I still believe
> there must have been some somewhere.

I don;t think VAX really took pff till most of the other players
had shot themselves in the foot (ie. Pr1me).

bill